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Enhancing Naval Partners’ Capabilities and Capacities: The U.S. Navy’s International Frigate Working GroupBy Rob Holzer and Scott Truver The challenges posed by increasing globalization and a corresponding rise in the interconnectedness across societies is fueling a growing array of maritime cooperation measures to ensure the security of the seas. Perhaps the most intriguing in recent years was the “1,000-Ship Navy” or “Global Maritime Partnership” unveiled at the 2005 International Seapower Symposium (ISS) by then-Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael G. Mullen. Mullen later explained that the “navy” was in reality “…global maritime partnership that unites maritime forces, port operators, commercial shippers, and international, governmental and nongovernmental agencies to address mutual concerns. Membership in this ‘navy’ is purely voluntary,” he continued, “and would have no legal or encumbering ties. It would be a free-form, self-organizing network of maritime partners––good neighbors interested in using the power of the sea to unite, rather than to divide. The barriers for entry are low. Respect for sovereignty is high.”1 This need for “good neighbors in using the power of the sea” has spawned numerous initiatives in virtually every world region. But one area of cooperation that is lagging is naval acquisition and modernization. This area is ripe for increased cooperation because of the large number of naval and coast guard units reaching obsolescence and the increasing costs of new warship construction. One nascent effort now underway that could dramatically alter this situation is the International Frigate Working Group (IFWG). A Global Perspective The world is steadily sailing into an era of globalization unlike any previously experienced in history. The interconnectedness of business, society and people today is extraordinary—and offers no signs of abating, despite the recent global economic meltdown. Matching this level of integration, the worlds’ economic, financial and supply systems have developed incredibly complex, yet distributed networks that have helped fuel this expansion of global interdependence. Underpinning much of this expansion in globalization is the unfettered access that all nations have to the global commons—the seas, air, space, and cyber domains. Global commerce depends almost overwhelmingly on the seas to move and distribute goods and products. More than 90 percent of the world’s commerce by weight travels by sea––a quadrupling during the last 40 years. About 95 percent of the data that zooms across cyberspace travels on cables lying on the bottom of the world’s seas and oceans. And there remains, as always, the inescapable fact that three-fourths of the world’s surface is covered by water. Navies and coast guards around the world have recognized that a secure maritime common is intimately linked to the overall prosperity and health of international commerce. The Royal Navy’s 2006 Vision statement, for example, concludes that despite the immense changes taking place as a result of globalization, the sea remains the “indispensable medium for trade and access” and is crucial to the continued “economic vitality” of the United Kingdom.2 Control of the seas has been a longstanding tenet in naval thinking. In his late 19th Century writings, American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan clearly saw the sea as a commercial highway and spent much effort detailing the fate of those nations, such as the Dutch, whose economic fortunes collapsed when they lost control of the seas to Great Britain. So dramatic was this impact that “grass grew in the streets of Amsterdam,” according to Mahan’s famous phrase.3 In a similar vein, the tri-service (U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard) 2007 A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower sought to capture the salient trends roiling the strategic landscape today by correctly recognizing that the world prospers when the “system of exchange among nations” can peacefully take place, and that the world’s waterways serve as the “lifeblood of a global system that links every country on earth.” To ensure that sea power remains “a unifying force” for helping to ensure continued global prosperity, the strategy clearly emphasized the overwhelming need to foster, build and expand on cooperative maritime relationships across the globe. “Trust and cooperation cannot be surged: in times of trouble,” the strategy states.4 This underlying message of cooperation contained in A Cooperative Strategy is clearly resonating throughout the world’s naval and maritime communities. In September 2009, representatives from more than 100 nations, including an unprecedented 95 chiefs of navies, came together in Newport, Rhode Island, in the United States, for the largest gathering ever of the biennial International Seapower Symposium. This far exceeds the 37 navies and coast guards that came together in 1969 for the initial ISS session. As Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Gary Roughead, said in remarks last September, “common use of the high seas has been a driver of international cooperation and institution-building for centuries,” and that “new partnerships” are required to meet the unique demands of the 21st Century: “The trend is clear—partnerships are growing.”5 We can plainly see the positive results radiating from these new partnerships and coalitions playing out operationally today across the world’s maritime domain. Naval cooperation and the formation of a variety of multinational task forces to meet urgent, but specific threats in areas as diverse as the Indian Ocean, the Straits of Malacca and in African waters, are on the upswing. Combined Task Force-151 is conducting anti-piracy operations and ensuring safe maritime transit off the coast of Somalia in the Gulf of Aden with 20 nations contributing ships over time to this continuing high-priority mission. In 2009, the Economic Community of Central African States has agreed to cooperate on policing their common waters and have established an operations center in Cameroon. In East Asia, nations such as Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia have come together to cooperate in a variety of ways to reduce the threat of piracy in the strategic Straits of Malacca, with assistance contributed from the United States and Japan. Missing from today’s discussions of deepening and expanding naval relationships––what could be the next evolution in this willingness to more assertively engage in maritime cooperation––is to extend this growing engagement into the domains of ship modernization and acquisition. With most of the world’s militaries facing challenging and in some cases even daunting future budgetary environment’s, the time is ripe to begin thinking more creatively about how to move naval partnerships into this expanded domain. The benefits to those navies willing to cooperate in future upgrade and modernization efforts could over time become quite substantive. Some initial efforts are already underway in this area, and could be a harbinger of larger efforts still to come. This is where the International Frigate Working Group comes in. The IFWG is seeking to capitalize on this growing need for collaboration and cooperation, albeit on a more focused scale, by getting multiple navies to unite around a common operating platform in order to share information, reduce costs and create greater efficiencies. Focus on Frigates A joint initiative of SEA 21 and the Commander of the FFG-7 Class Squadron, the International Frigate Working Group’s objective is to bring together the set of navies, including the U.S. Navy, that operate, maintain and upgrade the globally dispersed fleet of Perry-class frigates. A “world ship” in all but name, these warships were constructed during the Cold War and have long-served as escorts to amphibious ready groups in the U.S. Navy as well as performing a host of other tasks and missions over the ensuing decades in support of battle group deployments. A total of 51 ships were built for the U.S. Navy, along with four others for Australia that were constructed in American shipyards. In addition, Australia, Spain, and Taiwan built another 18 FFG-7s in their shipyards. While some of the older ships of this class have been scrapped, in late 2009 the U.S. Navy still operated a fleet of 30 FFG-7s, with almost 10 of these ships expected to be in operation to 2019. Another 22 ex-U.S. Navy Perry-class ships have been transferred to Bahrain, Egypt, Poland, and Turkey. In May 2009 the IFWG hosted at Mayport, Florida, the first-ever gathering of the Perry-class navies to share lessons learned and better understand the overall set of maintenance, obsolescence and logistics issues confronting navies using these aging but still useful ships. “Our goal is a sustainable FFG, with better availability and a reduced cost to maintain,” Rear Admiral McManamon said at the four-day conference. “Each country has a different view on how they use their FFGs.”6 The formation of this working group is widely seen as “timely, relevant and [a] critical enabler” to help extend the useful service life of this aging, but venerable class of workhorse ships,” Rear Adm. Kevin Quinn, Commander, U.S. Surface Force Atlantic, explained.7 While the navies that operate the FFG-7s use these warships for a broad spectrum of missions, the intrinsic value of the IFWG lies in identifying those areas of usage and concern common to all. The working group can then help to identify priorities and assist in developing preferred solutions that can best be applied across all Perry-class ships. This approach helps boost the operational viability of the frigates while simultaneously reducing the cost each individual navy incurs to acquire and install needed capability upgrades. Areas of particular concern across the class are: corrosion as the ships age; increasing obsolescence of some equipment that is no longer being manufactured; and cracks emerging in areas of the ship’s superstructure that are exposed to high levels of stress. Key Areas of Concern For example, one area of particular concern is the ship’s Engineering Plant Control System (EPCS), which is common across the entire class. While all of the FFG-7s use the same General Electric-built LM 2500 gas turbine engine, the firm that originally manufactured the EPCS is no longer in business. The stockpile of critical circuit card assemblies, essential for the operation of the EPCS, is thus rapidly dwindling, with no clear replacement on the horizon. “This is a problem for all of us,” Rear Admiral McManamon acknowledged. Using the IFWG framework, the FFG-7 user-navies can jointly seek out a new supplier for the cards or cooperatively develop a new process that can repair and refurbish the existing inventory. While this example is relatively minor, when applied to other areas including combat and weapon systems and machinery, the cost savings power of this approach across the entire class becomes compellingly attractive.8 Finalizing the overall terms of reference to guide the IFWG
The IFWG approach also closely mirrors the enterprise approach that the U.S. Navy is now undertaking and implementing across its entire surface warfare force. The Navy is now taking a larger, class-wide view of maintaining and upgrading surface combatants, rather than looking at individual warships in a piecemeal fashion, as was previously done. To achieve this more holistic approach, the service has created “class squadrons”—commonly referred to as “classrons”––that serve as critical links between the fleet and shore-based maintenance and readiness organizations. From this perspective, the IFWG and cooperatively developing common solutions to future FFG-7 needs could be seen as a sort of “International Classron,” enabling the individual experiences and lessons learned from the operation of 63 warships to be shared by all for the common good. Australia and Turkey Take Lead The IFWG has a rich menu of ongoing and planned modernization and upgrade efforts from which to choose from that are already underway across the various navies operating the Perry-class ships. Some of these efforts could potentially be applied to the entire class or be made available for sale or export to those navies interested in specific upgrade programs. Australia and Turkey are two of the nations who have been identified as having particularly robust modernization efforts currently underway. Since it indigenously built the frigate in its own shipyards, that experience has enabled Australia to undertake several fairly aggressive upgrade efforts for its four Perry-class warships. It also retired two frigates early in order to reap additional savings to invest in upgrading its four remaining ships. These upgrade efforts have primarily focused on improving the ships anti-air warfare capabilities versus newer generations of anti-ship guided missiles. The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) is upgrading its FFG-7s to fire the longer-range SM-2 version of the Standard surface-to-air missile from the existing MK13 guided-missile launching systems, and is installing an eight-cell version of the Mk 41 Vertical Launch System for the Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile. When the FFG-7 upgrades are complete, the RAN expects these improvements to extend the service life of its warships to 35 years instead of the current average of 25 years. These robust improvements and more importantly perhaps, the experiences the RAN has gained through this enhancement effort could be applicable to other nations operating within the IFWG framework.10 Turkey is emphasizing the integration of a new combat system into its eight FFG-7s, which will transform the capabilities of these ships. Underway since 2001, the first ship equipped with the Genesis Combat Management System was deployed in 2007, with installation and delivery on each of the Turkish ships expected to be complete in 2011. The overall Genesis effort is ambitious, including upgrading the weapon control system software, replacing existing weapons control consoles with new standardized versions, and integrating the control systems for several different weapons such as the Harpoon anti-ship missile, SLQ-32 electronic warfare system and the hull-mounted SQS-56 sonar. The Course Ahead The IFWG approach will yield significant operational enhancements for the world FFG-7 fleet, which will enable these ships to carry out additional missions for deployed commanders and increase their attractiveness as sought after assets when deploying in support of coalition or other international roles, missions and tasks. Operating the same type of ships that support U.S. Navy battle and amphibious groups, and sharing a commonality among equipment, methods of operation, and lessons learned will significantly enhance overall global maritime partner fleet interoperability. Such developments are entirely consistent with the objectives set forth in the Navy’s maritime strategy that seeks to boost overall levels of maritime partnership and cooperation. It is also a priority for Admiral Roughead, who has underscored the strategy’s tenets: “Besides information sharing, we must also work toward greater interoperability,” he noted at the September 2009 ISS meeting.11 “There are many ways to improve our interoperability and learn lessons of how to work together.” IFWG is off to a good start and lessons learned from this approach could be applied to future shipbuilding efforts, particularly the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), which is expected to garner increasing interest from foreign navies once it begins to deploy in earnest. Already countries like Israel have assessed the LCS for their requirements with additional interest still coalescing. Saudi Arabia has also expressed interest in the LCS and has sent representatives to tour the warships and receive briefings on the two alternative LCS designs.12 As the IFWG proves successful for the FFG-7s, it can serve as a model for how to incorporate multi-national maintenance and modernization approaches from the beginning of a program, rather than the more common practice of having these efforts emerge as afterthoughts when programs are well underway––enhancing naval and maritime capabilities and capacities across the board. Robert Holzer is Principal Analyst, National Security Programs, Gryphon Technologies LC, Greenbelt, Maryland. Dr. Truver directs Gryphon’s National Security Programs group. References |
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